How do your law firm’s competitors show up locally in Google?

Google remains the predominant search engine in 2025 for users looking for a lawyer. Search results are changing with the introduction of Generative AI, and Google’s constant shifting of its local search result pages.

Law firm visibility In Google’s local search results

Below are some examples of where you can find your competitors in Google’s local search.

Local Service Ads (LSA) – show at the top of local service results. Attorneys are vetted by Google and show a corresponding badge. This is prime local search result visibility as it shows at the top of local search engine pages. If your competition is not here, you should be.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) – Are you constantly seeing your competition in sponsored listings at the top and bottom of local topical pages, related to your services? This is a sign that your law firm should invest in PPC as well.

Google’s Generative AI – Do you see your competition mentioned in Google’s Generative AI in local topical search results? This is a sign that you should heavily invest in content marketing to show Google and other local language models (LLMs) that you should also be included in AI.

Google’s Local Map 3-Pack—Do you see other law firms in Google’s Local 3-Pack in their local search results? There are steps you can take to rise in Google’s local map pack search results.

Law Firm Directories – If you are seeing law firms show up on the first page of Google, in lawyer directories, you may want to invest in the short term on these law firm directory listing pages. As law firm directories have lost about a third of their visibility in Google, invest on a yearly basis, and don’t blindly renew subscriptions. Always invest in a law firm directory audit to ensure listings still have visibility in Google.

Local Organic Search Results – Are your competitors appearing in Google’s local organic search results? If so, it is a good bet that they have invested heavily in legal content marketing. Google rewards legal websites that show topical knowledge about the law and its statutes.

How can your law firm use competitor analysis to become a local authority?

So the good news is that with a bit of research, you can use your competitors’ information to help your law firm be seen as a local authority. Below is an example on how to use this information to build content briefs that are comprehensive.

Topical Authority – To reverse engineer topical authority we uses the following step:

For an individual area of practice of law

Enter the below information into a spreadsheet:

• Use Google incognito mode
• Search locally for the top search keyword phrase:
  • Example: Union County Bankruptcy Lawyers
• Identify all competitors that are showing up in Google’s local organic search results (the blue links)
• Note each website
• Go to each website’s XML sitemap, identify each page and post that is related to your area of practice of law.

Once you are done compiling the information, you can use the combination of these pages and post’s topics and sub-topics o create a comprehensive content brief.

You should also find the related statutes to this topic in your practice area. You should link to itand review the statute to see if there are topics and subtopics that your competition has not covered.

You can expand on this information by using Google’s People Also Ask questions as a FAQ for the page.

You can take this information and build a hierarchy content brief for your writers.

Ensure to give them all the links to the statutes as supporting documentation.

Once you have your content from your writers, ensure that you internally link to corresponding pages from your copy, as well as to the external links for the statutes you have quotes.

If this sounds time-consuming, it is. However, the results far outweigh the time you took to do this research.